


The Seven Mysteries of a Ruined Heir

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), Editor!Remus, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU, Sirius likes his bedsheets, almost as much as Remus likes poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9660191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: In retrospect, Sirius has always been terrible at accepting change. Everybody else has emotions that are pliant and sensible, and yet the disowned son of Black has evermore stood with an iron-fisted heart and a lump in his throat.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I love reading fragment fics, so I figured I'd sew up some backstory and the proceeding development in one of them! I've always felt so connected to writing from Sirius' point of view (we're both raging Scorpios), and this was a wonderful exercise for me to explore the way I've constructed his feelings in this AU. I hope you enjoy :)
> 
> Thank you again for reading, you all are lovely <3

_I._

He is 13 and it is June, and his world is ending.

Sirius bites down hard on his lip with furious tears in his eyes, staring out his bedroom window with the bed covers pulled up to his ears. The half moon blurs in his murky vision and a track of tears trips sideways across the bridge of his nose like a line of angry bandits plummeting into the ink of his hair curling on his pillowcase. He is feeling disastrously alone for the first time all summer.

Shut away without supper hours ago because he can’t quite bite back the sourness in his tone anymore, his father hits him twice as hard these days and he’s starting to exit boyhood in a maddening flurry of anger and fear— _Remus and James and Pete would know what to do,_ yes, but Remus and James and Pete are home with families that love them and would never think twice of lashing their backs with a silver cane. Sirius hates himself as he lets a choked sob leave him in a leap, stuffs a corner of his sheets between his teeth to scream, mute and frustrated with an existential fury he doesn’t even have a name for at this age, until his throat hurts.

This is all his fault, he’s been taught. Everything that goes wrong in great bursts of pain that linger in the snarling signatures of bruises across his skin has become his fault because he had the gaul to be born with courage where there should have been cunning, the arrogance to assume that he was worth anything beyond the ashes at the bottom of the hearth. He is the eldest, after all, and he has effectively shattered the mantle he was intended to carry. Sirius thinks listlessly that if he died it wouldn’t be terrible. But if he died, he also wouldn’t get to see his friends again in a matter of months. A fresh well of tears bursts through his eyes as the concept of an entire summer of this madness looms in his mind like one of his ubiquitous bad dreams. He doesn’t know what to do.

A sound on the windowsill stills his misery when a massive grey owl alights and ruffles its feathers in balance. As Sirius watches, rapt and sniffling with a shuddering post-sob, it drops a piece of parchment on the floor from its beak and preens patiently in its silhouetted strangeness. Sirius swipes at his eyes and slide out from between his sheets, grabbing his wand and carefully avoided the single groaning floorboard on his way over. He picks up the parchment with shaking fingers and illuminates it with a hoarse whisper to read the message that burns itself into his mind forever; it saves his will from the edge for the last time he ever needs it:

_Sirius!_

_This is my father’s owl. His name is Euripides, like the Greek playwright. I hope he’s kind to you, he sometimes nips my fingers.  
_ _I can’t fall asleep and I wonder how you’ve been doing too in London? I’ve never been to London, but I think it must feel massive.  
_ _I miss you. I know boys don’t say that, but you’ve seen me cry before so I think it’s okay to talk about my feelings once or twice. I hope you’re okay at home. I think about you there sometimes and it worries me, is there any way you can visit Hereford at all? My mum could cook a wonderful dinner and my da could tell you field mission stories. He used to be very exciting!  
_ _Please write back soon, or if you can’t I understand but know that I hope you’re safe and I can’t wait to see you and James and Pete again on the other end of summer._

_Goodnight,_

_—Remus_

Sirius doesn’t write back, can’t write back for the parallel disasters of fearing the rage of his parents if they found out and the chaotic flummox of emotions stirred up in his core. If he tried to put quill to parchment, he’s sure he would implode with raw energy—he can’t tame anything anymore, his feelings are as volatile as his ever-lengthening limbs in this hecticism of burgeoning adolescence. So he lets it all sit dormant and growing for three long months of anxiety and determination. As his rampant thoughts gestate, James sends Sirius several packages in the dead of night, tied miraculously to his little runt of an owl, and Remus sends two more rambling and miraculous letters that Sirius saves in the secret compartment of his closet like a secret for his heart.

When he sees Remus again in September they’re both several inches taller, Remus’ voice cracks with change when he tells them stories about a family trip to Rome, and Sirius feels the pit of his stomach drop deeper than the seventh circle of hell in that book James lent him secretly in July when he realizes the lower tones of Remus’ emerging honey-gold tenor make him think of safety and sunlight and a home he has never had.

 

_II._

He is 16 and it is Christmas, and his world is finally alive.

Sirius laughs, drunk on pilfered ale and several shots of Firewhiskey stolen under the table, literally, through dinner with James’ obscenely large family—he and James have buggered off to the furthest corner of the field behind his mum and dad’s house in a clumsy flurry of warming charms to build a tiny bonfire and revel in their official brotherhood for the first time since Sirius came home with James for good at the start of the month.

“…and so you can’t snog any of my cousins!” James warns him, tipsy as well and infected with a bout of boyish giggles, “They’re _your_ family now too, so that’s bloody disgusting!”

Sirius takes a long draught from his flask, the last of it, so he chucks the empty tin into the air and transfigures it wildly into a pop of metallic-colored fireworks. James whoops a cheer and Sirius lets the sparks settle before he chuckles darkly. “Careful telling me about cousins, the Blacks got off on that.”

James responds by pelting him with a handful of old crusted snow and dirt, which Sirius barely dodges in an artless twist.

“Honestly, though, you’re really my brother now. Padfoot and Prongs, the unlikely pair,” James sings, his smile wide and his cheeks flushed with happiness. Their new nicknames are still somewhat awkward in the ways they trip across the tongue, still only halfway to feeling like true identity, but Sirius loves the way his knits him into his three favorite people with indelible secrecy. He almost sallies back with a rebuttal of _But not quite as unlikely as Padfoot and Moony_ before his sense of self-preservation makes him swallow the remark like the dregs of his drink when it hits the back of his teeth.

He’s been careful about his attraction, only letting it show in hopeful surges when he and Remus find themselves alone—little indolent touches to his shoulder or the side of his leg, purposeful smiles and looks that he hopes say I Think You’re Amazing but can’t for the life of him put into words—he’s mostly sure Remus has been returning it all in his own way as well. He’s never shoved Sirius away, even gone so far as to lean into a few of the moments unconsciously to Sirius’ raucous inner delight, but Sirius always finds his resolve turned to bitter stone when he tries to find some way to communicate exactly what it is he wants to mean to Remus. He supposes he needs to kiss Remus one of these days, but his imagination always balks at that hallowed bastion of hope and only ever gives him a blank slate of what to do about it. But now isn’t the time to pine, carefree and toasted in his new back garden; he does enough of that on his own anyways.

“And you’re _my_ brother,” Sirius says, throwing an arm around James’ shoulders and wresting him there with a meaningful squeeze against his thick jumper, “so no more moping about Evans unless you _do_ something about it!”

James looks sideways at him, the firelight glinting off of his glasses with the motion, and looks slightly devastated. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Brotherly guidance; once we’re back at school, you have to ask Evans on a date before May rolls about,” Sirius says with determination.

“But why!” James sputters. “That’s hardly any time at all to plan anything!” 

“Come off it, that’s at _least_ a full bloody month!” Sirius cries with laughter.

“Oh, tell me again how good _you_ are at planning dates with girls, mister I’m To Good For Every Female At Hogwarts.”

“At least I’ve been on a few,” Sirius asserts, blithely skirting the fact that “been on a few” has entailed a grand total of three trips to Honeydukes with Marlene McKinnon to talk about music and books and not so much as even brush their fingertips together. He would never admit to James that he’s only ever liked spending time with girls to do friendly things. Marlene is the only one who hasn’t teased him about it, and Sirius has thought more than once that she looks at girls the way he’s quite positive he looks at Remus.

Sirius plops down in front of the fire, the log underneath him warm from the proximity, and turns to James after a moment. “Are you in love, James?”

“Yes,” James replies immediately, with a flash of confidence in his eyes that makes Sirius blink in the silence that settles comfortably between them. The fire crackles a couple times and something chitters in the woods, which makes Sirius’ new foundation of canine spur twitch in his belly. “Yes,” James says again after a while, clear and soft. “I’m in love with Lily. And I’m a cowardly berk who can’t even say hello to her sometimes.”

Sirius feels his mouth twitch into a gentle smile. “Well I’m the furthest thing from an expert, but I wouldn’t make you try if I didn’t think she was worth it for you.”

James grins then, lopsided and thankful and Sirius thinks maybe James wouldn’t hate him if he admitted anything about Remus. But not now; now is a time for celebrating, so through impish subtlety in a burst of laughter from James, Sirius draws another flask from his jacket and toasts to the night. The stag and the dog, brothers beyond the bonds of destiny, stumbling through the alleyways of the sprawl of life set before them like a roadmap they have yet to weave thick with the charms of folly.

 

_III._

He is 18 and it’s early summer, and his world moves slowly here.

Basingstoke is quiet, but Remus loves Basingstoke and so Sirius is learning to love it too. He should probably get a job, he thinks—uncle Alford’s inheritance could last two lifetimes if he metes it out correctly, so he’s more than set, but he needs something to stay the crawl of long Muggle hours that threaten to choke his psyche like a heavy blanket. He’s restless. He would never let on that he’s bored; he’ll figure something out.

Remus reads his way through the days while Sirius plays records, and he finds it still makes him jump a little each time Remus’ fingers find his own at rest on his thigh or the arm of the couch. He is staggeringly unused to the ease of being affectionate in the nest of their flat, their definition of whatever it is they do still vague and gentle like a subtle perfume, so Sirius just lets it happen. He’s become extremely accustomed to stepping back and avoiding responsibility like wildfire.

In the long spaces between the hours, they each adjust steadily. The parallel circuitry of this quiet life has a faint ground hum of promise, which Sirius likes, and yet also feels strangely aimless, which Sirius doesn’t know how to feel about. He knows this is what they must do—to keep them both safe, Sirius needed to find this hidden gem of a town in which he and Remus can burrow into the camouflage of normalcy. If the wizarding world continues to ramp out of control from the starts of disaster they saw in flashes of unruly purebloods at Hogwarts, they need to be alright with the likely possibility to living as Muggles from time to time. Call it sheltering, call it strategy, call it cowardice; regardless, a strange sense of pride has taken root inside Sirius at this abject defiance of his lineage.

He isn’t ever sure if Remus knows of these machinations Sirius has planned so carefully—exactly why This walkup, why This town, the answers to which would be Easy Floo Access and Just Far Enough From London To Quiet The Anxiety—but Remus is smart. He’s probably figured it out and not said anything out of the same sense of emotional avoidance that plagues Sirius, because of this fairly crippling aura of What Are We that Sirius knows would come to a head in the underpinnings of the “I didn’t know you cared Like That” conversation that would accompany the acknowledgement of thanks for the flat. But both men stay dutifully quiet on that front, because Basingstoke is quiet and proper quietude at this age begets mostly-harmless secrets.

In the weeks that unfold as the flat shifts from The Flat to Our Flat to Home, Sirius feels himself relax into the unease of living. He and Remus spend slow late mornings, or afternoons, or evenings, fucking on every surface that even marginally acts as a counterweight, even twice overflowing the imposing claw-footed bathtub for Remus’ overeager shift to pin Sirius to its edge in possession. They make tenuous acquaintance with the tenants below them for all the noise they know is filtering down through their floorboards, but neither of them particularly care beneath the surface—to varying degrees of vehemence. Sex is a convenient way to forget to be nervous, and Sirius finds it easier to accept the threatening mountain of adulthood with each gasped syllable of his name that he can coax from Remus’ lips. He supposes it’s one of the more destructive coping mechanisms, but as far as the rest of his life has been slated he would like to think it’s healthy enough. It certainly makes Remus smile like the eastern sunshine.

Nearly a month into their new home, Sirius stumbles across a garage in town with a heavily-mustached Muggle working within, elbows-deep in the hood of an old Ford. Sirius strikes up conversation about the types of cars people tend to drive in Basingstoke—nothing too new, nothing too expensive, too few imports for Sirius’ own boyish delights—and within minutes Sirius has secured himself a job as the man’s apprentice. Mort is the Muggle’s name, and Sirius immediately begins personifying him in the back of his own mind as a genial walrus. Upon Sirius’ return to the flat with the news, Remus is gently surprised but genuinely happy for Sirius’ decision, a rare expression on him these days that makes the pit of Sirius’ being boil with pride. Sirius is never sure he’s doing everything correctly, but if he can make Remus smile like this at least once every day, he’s quite certain he’ll pave the right path eventually.

 

_IV._

He is 20 and it is somewhere between late night and early morning, and his world is twined in an anxious knot.

Sirius has tried forcing sleep for the last five hours, only greeting it in fitful and frustrating bouts of liminal slumber that drags itself back out of arms’ reach intermittently. He knows it’s for the worry of it all, because Remus is using that fucking cellar for the third time and won’t be back in his bed until the moon sets. On top of several other maddening layers of preoccupation weighing heavily on his nerves, Sirius thinks he might dissolve in twined-up misery here in the tomb-quiet flat.

_Rumors_. It’s all bloody fucking rumors, but Sirius can’t help but give credence to the instinct in his guts for once—he’s lived with these people, hell, he was supposed to _be_ one of these people, and now with the previous morning’s spread in the Prophet crowing _DARK FORCES AFOOT AFTER YEARS OF DORMANCY?_ and the radio alongside a lonely dinner racketing on about several security breaches at Azkaban, he knows deep down that a massive and disgusting gear has starting twisting like molten iron through the viscera of the wizarding world and will only speed up its destruction. He’s very much allowed to be worried.

Sirius has staved off the worst of it with thick draughts of drink, letting Remus take the bed alone last night for his insistence that he was having too many issues with the gibbous to sleep without thrashing and would only keep Sirius awake unnecessarily—Sirius had stayed awake on the makeshift bed of the sofa anyways, four fingers of Firewhiskey downed quietly but with a swiftness that would have alarmed even James. It’s almost as if the magic in Sirius’ blood feel slighted, left out of the fray, clawing occasionally and violently at his veins with vague thoughts tinted in silver and green that make his fingers twitch to close around his wand unconsciously. It scares him; he’s kept his wand clear across the room from him since Tuesday.

Sirius sighs heavily and turns to his side in the tangle of sheets he’s tossed and turned around his waist. He buries his face in the pillow next to him idly, inhaling Remus’ lingering scent for some kind of distraction as he closes his eyes, and feels the all too familiar and blessedly welcome combination of safety and gentleness and desire kick up in the sediment of his pulse. He feels himself harden slightly, presses his hips down against the mattress with a tentative and lazy rut, and is satisfied by the perfunctory, encompassing warmth that blooms in the pit of his pelvis.

Sirius shifts himself onto his elbows, nuzzling his face further into the pillow and letting out a feathery groan that carries much of the exhaustion of the past few days with it. He rolls his hips down again, insistence growing and tightening now with the determination to silence his mind through the white noise of building pleasure. He bids his mind to wander and imagines Remus safe and calm, sprawled beside him with his skin bared and beautiful, blushed by morning and inviting Sirius to look, touch, taste—Sirius reaches down and wraps a hand around himself, can’t quite keep in a guttered groan when he feels the strong twitch of his length stiffening quickly and a bead of slick warmth at its tip that he spreads with a slow, deliberate twist of his palm.

He bites down hard on his lower lip out of blind habit while the twinned motion of his push against the mattress and his clutching fingers work in welcome tandem to drown out the chorus of apprehension that had been racketing him from the distant unknown. The work of keeping himself propped up on his forearms makes his shoulders quiver, the burning pull of muscular effort pairing well with the thrill he fosters ardently between his legs, and he lets his mental image warp into the delectable canvas of absolute nothingness; blank light strewn with invisible striations, patterns skittering in shifting fractals across the backs of his eyes like the bursts of sunspots that would dance in his vision when he used to stare at the sky for too long as a boy. Sirius lets himself forget he should be afraid, lets himself revel in the humming chord of suspension that he strings through his body in ever-heightening velocity with each stroke as he goes deaf to his own chaotic predisposition.

Mounting bliss like a mountain path, higher and thinner and his breath attenuates, his skin flushes, he feels it harbored in the crests of his cheekbones, lets raw little moans of effort trip out from his throat, _oh_ he wants to stretch out this sacred escape like labyrinthine thread but he can feel his limit building, building, building at the atlas of his skull—when he comes it takes him by surprise, slipping through his defenses like a lance of platinum and making him cry out, suffuse with vulnerability, into the pillow on which he had ducked his forehead. His hips cant forward with each low, hard, rich pulse of release, spilling across his hand and the sheets beneath him as he continues through the crest of it, rolling with its riptide in a wash of muzzy satisfaction. He lets it pull the breath from him in short, audible gasps and slows his hand to a decadent grip of indulgence to carry him through the wave—for a moment all is suspended in the nameless core of perfect solitude, nothing but his own touch and the biome of hypersensitive contentment invading his thoughts. When he comes down from the brief high minutes later, Sirius charms away the mess and rolls back onto his side. He closes his eyes with a low groan of punctuation and feels proper exhaustion finally approaching; he closes his eyes to let it swallow him whole.

He slips fitfully into a heady and dreamless sleep and stays aloft in the death-dark murk until he feels the weight of the mattress displace an innumerable stretch of time later. The canine instinct in him knows immediately that it’s Remus, hearing the shuffle of him shedding clothing and smelling of exertion and numbness and the secret salt of wolfish afterburn through the anonymity of his closed eyes, and so Sirius reaches out to gather him up tight when he slides between the covers.

“Welcome home,” Sirius whispers, his eyes still shut because he wants to stave away the knowledge of Remus perhaps having a new scar, a fresh bruise that could very well make Sirius burst into tears through this strange and tenuous peace he’s built around himself. Remus fits easily against Sirius’ chest, his breath labored and loamy and coming out in heavy puffs through his nose as he presses a single kiss to Sirius’ collarbone.

“I might need some mending in the morning,” Remus responds, already starting to drift off by the slur in his words, “just a few minor cuts. Sorry if I bleed on you.”

“No worries. Sleep,” Sirius hushes him, a gentle hand to smooth the tangled curls of Remus’ hair and within seconds he’s out like a candle. Sirius pulls him just barely closer, tries to relax the tension in his furrowed brow, and wishes he knew how to dive into Remus’ dreams in order to try and calm his own.

 

_V._

He is still 20 and it is raining again, and his world is a flurry of underbrush and adrenaline.

The echoes of the storm on February foliage clatter through his ears, his rhythmic panting matching the slap and skitter of his paws on the forest floor beneath him. Branches scrape at his fur, pulling at the silken black strands like wet fingers, skirting his haunches as he crashes over logs, leaves, moss—the sharp grey of his eyes catches every flash of the forest, the most human remainder of him that would reveal the transformation for what it is if one ever bothered to look hard enough, and the pale light of the full moon illuminates the forest like a widespread spell in the shades of pale near-blue. Were it not for the circumstance, this would be raw bliss.

A heavy crash and a low howl sounds to his left, and Padfoot turns on a dime to dive over a fallen stump and sprint to the source of the sounds. He emerges in a corridor of heavy pines, sliding to a stop before the shape of the werewolf. With the human wherewithal of Sirius’ mind, he would describe the wolf as patchwork; many parts of many different hounds knit into one another with the crude thread of lunar command. The legs are clawed and powerful—grey wold in matted, angry fur—and the sharp curve of its back along the angular expanse of its heaving ribs are terrifying—coyote, perhaps, or some kind of perverse and massive dingo. Its ears are sharp, cropped and vague and nearly always tipped back in challenge, and the snarl of its muzzle holds the almost fox-like slimness of a slighted red wolf. It turns to face Padfoot with a rumbling growl in challenge, and Padfoot responds with his hackles raised and a rasping bark in return. His muscles thrum with ready tension; the run is at hand.

Instead of lunging towards him the wolf growls again, sizing him up and challenging his eager stance. Yellow eyes like the burn of the moon itself, sharp gold with madness behind them that bleeds into the pull of the wolf’s muzzle as it bares its teeth and the drip of spittle tinted with blood on its lips—it has already bitten its foreleg, and Padfoot barks again with hopeful distraction to pull the wolf’d focus away from its own pain-rattled body and onto the prize of chasing the shaggy black bullet of a dog.

The wolf feints forward, snapping its jaws with a baying growl, and Padfoot takes the chance to dodge to the right and shoot off over the underbrush again, careening through the rainy woods with the wolf on his heels. The cadence of his paws against the forest floor builds to a fevered gallop, his panting rising to match the rhythm of the vein of greyhound in his mutt’s blood— _keep him safe, keep him safe, keep him safe._ Every turn swats Padfoot with another fern, another branch that rakes him but he revels in it, feels the heavy air of the rainstorm dampening his lungs as the sounds of the wolf charging along behind him racket off the surrounding trees like a hidden army.

The Forbidden Forest was never so dense, more trees than underbrush, but in the mornings Sirius has consistently found that he prefers the earthiness of this northern forest. Perhaps it’s due in part to being able now to wake up in the warmth of their own home together after each run, or the fact that Remus has gotten better and better at commanding control over the transformation as the years have stretched onward, but his bones don’t ache upon waking as badly as they used to and Sirius secretly loves to smell the remnants of the dirt and leaves of the chase on his and Remus’ hair in pale early light. It makes him feel more alive than ever.

The wolf howls from behind him in frustrated pursuit and Padfoot barrels forward in his loping dash. He is faster now than he ever was with the first few transformations, becoming more and more familiar with this body and the ways in which the dog moves best. Sirius has always been meant to offset Remus, in life and in love and in all things in between, and the thrill and ease of these monthly runs have convinced him of that with iron surety—the wolf bounds to the side, cutting Padfoot off at a pass, and snarls in warning as he bares his teeth to size him up. Padfoot responds with a bark, his tail wagging madly in excitement and more arrogant challenge, and he dares those yellow eyes to try and catch him again with an agile leap over a dead tree in the opposite direction. They run, and run, and run.

Through the dark rumble of the night filled with rain and distant thunder, the muted side of Sirius knit into the dog’s consciousness takes solace in the exhaustion of the chase. He and Remus are made for one another, as deeply bound as blood and bone and fur and teeth.

 

_VI._

He is 21, very nearly 22, and it is Halloween, and his world is on fire.

Sirius doesn’t understand the first broken sob out of Remus’ mouth when he walks through the door, too overtaken by the surge of protective instinct that makes him drop his coat and helmet with a clatter and bundle Remus close like a crumbling prayer. The radio is blaring in the corner, stuck on Ministry news too crowded with shouts and muddled cheering to be discernible, and the fireworks Sirius had been ready to make a stupid inquisitive joke about as he stepped over the threshold explode outside in flurries like cannon fire. Sirius feels his heart in his throat and can barely bring himself to ask the hardest “What happened, Remus?” that he’s ever had to dredge up from his guts.

“I got an owl from Minerva, Alice and Frank are dead,” Remus chokes out, his chin trembling with the effort to speak through his tears, and Sirius’ breath catches in his throat like a morning star. He hears the high keen of panic ebb into his ears as Remus continues; “Voldemort tried to kill Neville, it didn’t work, he destroyed himself, some—some sort of fucking prophecy, but he got to Alice and Frank first, they were trying to protect the baby, I—I can’t fucking—!”

“Merlin risen,” Sirius breathes, feeling emotion swell up in him like boiling tar and searing his throat when his own tears breach the surface. He clasps Remus back into him, numb to the apparent celebration screaming through the radio, bitterness clenching like a vicegrip at his lungs when he hears the man hosting the hour assert the night as "the utmost victory for the entire wizarding world!” over the reverie, the energy rising in a roar of rampant whoops and shouts. The dissonance of the moment is deafening.

“We need to go to James and Lily,” Sirius says through a heavy sniffle, “can we Floo?”

“Network is down, the—the Ministry acted fast, no way to get anywhere quickly.”

“Motorbike then,” Sirius growls decisively, pulling back to kiss Remus hard on the forehead as Remus responds with a helpless sob. Sirius’ heart knots itself up madly. He picked up his riding jacket and throws it on, passes Remus the other leather coat on the hanging rack, and retrieves Remus’ helmet from underneath several scarves and hats before taking up his own at his feet. Remus’ is shiny with disuse in contrast to the well-loved scratches and smudges scored over Sirius’ helmet, and in the back of his mind Sirius wonders why he always finds minute detail on which to latch amidst catastrophe.

They lock the flat behind them hastily, descending the walkup stairs in a rush, to find themselves on their street blessedly empty of revelers. With fireworks still bursting in the distance to the west, Sirius wrests his bike from the alleyway and mounts it, donning his helmet roughly as Remus climbs on behind him and clutches tightly around his waist. He’s trembling still, so Sirius takes a moment to lace their fingers together at his chest and kiss Remus’ palm, defiantly ardent, before flipping down his eye-shield and kicking the bike to life in with a violent snarl. He revs the engine to make it roar in ignition and they’re off in the direction of Godric’s Hollow, skimming through the street like a frantic animal.

As they approach the Hollow, skirting through streets at a steadily blazing pace on hairpin turns that make Sirius’ insides lurch and test his self-taught reflexes as a biker, the area becomes more and more packed with celebrating wizards and witches. Sirius hears the din of their cheering and more bloody fireworks like dulled bedlam through the muffled cave of his helmet, underscored by his heavy breathing filtering around him like the choke of a greenhouse. _If only you knew, if only you fucking knew,_ but he stills his mind as the bike careens down a stretch of side road, knowing with a small measure of implacable vitriol that almost all of these people would rather a few eggs to make an omelet even it means a baby has to grow up without his fucking parents and two dear friends have been murdered. The dangerous combination of anonymity and ignorance has a way of diluting the hurt of it all for the masses.

After twenty endless minutes Sirius’ arms are afire from guiding the bike. His throat is tight with apprehension and his waist aches from where Remus is holding him like a life preserver, and the glow of Godric’s Hollow at the bottom of the next wide hill they crest is a sickening sort of heartening. The bike’s engine roars all the way up to the Potters’ front door, so Sirius is hardly surprised when James throws open the door in a frantic silhouette before Sirius has a chance to even cut the ignition and lean the bike against the fence.

“McGonagall and Dumbledore are here,” James calls, slightly out of breath, and Remus tears his helmet off and clatters into the house without saying a word. James ducks to the side to let him pass, and Sirius stores both helmets on the seat of the bike haphazardly before making his way up the stout front steps with fear heavy on his tongue like blood. James catches him there in a rough brotherly embrace, and Sirius feels a fraught combination of despair and relief in the hold when he returns it briefly. Sirius pulls back and swipes at his eyes, and before he can say anything he realizes he hears a baby crying from the living room. His ears twitch and his stomach drops.

“That’s not Harry.”

“Dumbledore has Neville with him,” James whispers, his eyes hardened over with depthless paternal sadness. Sirius’ guts clench for what feels like the thousandth time and he steps past James into the warmth of the house proper that doesn’t feel very warm right now through the frigidity of grief.

“…honestly, Albus, we would if we could, but James and I can’t take another baby right now,” Lily is saying through a bout of tears she’s managed to reign into a gentle, steady flow of order to speak evenly. “And he should stay in his family, he has a grandmother, doesn’t he?”

“Hello, Mr. Black,” McGonagall says softly when she sees Sirius enter, cataloguing his slightly frantic arrival with a feline accuracy underpinned by the same general unease as the others in the sitting room. The front door shuts solidly and James comes to stand next to Sirius with grave determination etched into his face.

“Augusta has agreed to take him if it’s necessary, but she is a squib, you know,” Dumbledore explains, and Sirius nearly starts at how many memories of adolescence the sonorous voice dredges up for its timbre. “She would like for him to be somewhere he’ll be able to come into his magic with as much wherewithal as possible. There remains a very real risk of dark practitioners coming after him as he grows up.”

“Alice would have—wanted him to stay within their family,” Lily stammers, stumbling with the hurdle of emotion at the raw wound left by Alice’s death. “And isn’t Voldemort dead? Why would the followers of a dead leader keep chasing a _child_?”

“I don’t trust the solidity of the minds of fanatics,” Dumbledore says evenly. He turns suddenly to Sirius, his wise and pale eyes sparkling with fervor. “Sirius, good to see you safe. Any ideas for our situation?”

Sirius’ mind races, all he wants to do is hug Lily and cry, they had just seen Alice and Frank last week for Merlin’s sake, alive and happy and—numerous threads of thought running the gamut from Terrified to Overwhelmed straight back to Confused are braiding up like a disaster of twine in his brain. “I—“ he begins, stops, takes a breath, latches blindly onto the concept of squibs in the general madness of the moment that hasn’t yet allowed him to catch a full breath—“If Neville’s grandmother is a squib, she could—she could guard him with the pretense of keep his magic a secret. There’s—something to be said for hiding in plain sight.”

“Astute,” Dumbledore says simply as he shares a brief look with McGonagall, who returns it with a confounding twist of her brow.

“What, deprive him of a proper childhood?” James says angrily, seizing the lot of their attention. His words seethe with a stab of disbelief and Sirius feels a twinge of defiance. 

“I’m not telling them to smother him, James,” Sirius tries, “I’m just saying, from—from experience, a bit of a Muggle buffer could—“

“You’re un-fucking-believable!” James suddenly roars, and there is an explosion of rage behind his eyes that Sirius has never seen in his entire life, unbridled and crimson, and Sirius can only stare dumbfounded. The sound of Harry waking in the nursery stirs and Lily flies up the stairs, leaving the sisterly defense of Sirius in lieu of the preservation of her son. Sirius doesn’t blame her; McGonagall steps forward in her stead.

“Mr. Potter, what does—”

“It’s been easy for you throughout this whole fucking mess, hasn’t it?” James ignores the slighted witch and jabs a finger into Sirius’ chest. It hurts like a scythe, the intent of it ripping down to his core. This is the culmination of years of little grievances compressed into an explosive outcome set afire by James’ limited experience with grief, then—Sirius knows this feeling better than to try and interrupt it. He swallows the indomitable knot in his throat and prepares to let his spirit be trampled under the sharp hooves of James’ fury.

“You and Remus have burrowed your fucking heads in the sand for almost three sodding years now, and you have the _gaul_ to suggest that we just suss Neville off to hide like you did after his parents, your FRIENDS, paid the heaviest fucking price to keep him alive?!”

“James—”

“LET ME SPEAK!” James points a tense of shaking finger at Dumbledore, his anger blind and galloping, and the old professor must also see the necessity of the eruption in the burning dark of his glare; he glances at Sirius as if asking if it’s alright to let this continue, and Sirius acquiesces with a secretive nod and tears in his eyes.

“Did you ever _once_ think that you could have done something to help? You have real power, Sirius, forget your surname for a fucking second and think of how you could have used your magic! You could have been a fucking Auror, and then maybe at _least_ Frank could still be here—”

“What, so I could have died instead?! Would that have been more convenient, no wife, no child, less of a loss?!” Sirius shouts, his voice raw and violent as the words rocket into James’ face propelled by a mountain of shocked hurt. _You’re my brother, what the fuck are you saying—_

“You could have helped where it really mattered!” James responds, meeting his volume with their heightening outrage, “You could have at least done _something_ to fend off your fucking cousins and made a difference, but you cloistered yourself like a fucking hermit and left all the rest of us to figure this whole war out—”

“I did what I had to do!”

“BULLSHIT! You did what you _wanted_ to do! You’re such a fucking coward, I can’t believe—”

“STOP IT!”

Silence slaps them then, sharply, as they all look to Remus, the source of the broken cry tucked into the corner of the sitting room. He is cradling Neville close as the baby bawls into the shoulder of his jumper, tears still streaking down his own face as he glares at them both with disappointed accusation. “You’re scaring Neville,” he whispers simply, defeated, his voice cracking around the words like driftwood before he continues trying to console the child—he bows his head to murmur soft susurrations as his body jumps with silent sobs, stroking Neville’s sparse hair slowly, holding him close and turning away slightly as if the rest of the room is a collection of unpleasant memories. Sirius’ heart shatters in hundreds of layers of guilt.

“Fuck—I—I’m sorry,” James manages to say roughly, pressing a sleeve to his mouth to stay an obvious swell of emotion before turning on his heel for the back door and banging out into the garden. Sirius catches a glimpse of Lily peering down in alarm from the landing visible from the stairwell, and he shakes his head with a short dismissiveness to say _Leave It_. She returns to the nursery after a half-second of hesitation.

“Sirius, I think you’re right,” Dumbledore finally says after a long moment with gentle appointment. Sirius moves to wipe his eyes again and finds even more tears than he expected.

“We should send an owl to Augusta and let her know we’re coming,” McGonagall says through a light sigh. Sirius looks over to Remus, who is now watching the exchange with reddened eyes and an unconscious protective hold still clutching the baby close. He draws breath and Sirius steels his resolve to hear Remus’ raw shard of a voice again.

“Will he be safe?” he asks simply, hollow and stricken with worry and _Merlin hanging_ , Sirius never wanted to see him so ruined in his life.

“I’ll be watching the house for several days,” McGonagall assures him, “and Hagrid will help with the arrangements. He’s terribly fond of the child already, so you must know he’ll be in good hands.”

“Alright,” Remus whispers, taking another moment to hold Neville before passing him over to Dumbledore’s waiting arms. Sirius sees another wave of sadness rise up behind the deep green eyes, and Remus retreats to the kitchen with an apologetic wave to the pair of professors. Lily descends the stairs at the same time cradling Harry and watches the exchange happen with the overarching concern of a mother hawk.

“Will you need to be leaving then?” she asks softly, unconsciously rocking the calmed bundle of Harry at her waist. Sirius looks to the foil of Dumbledore holding Neville, the baby’s wailing calmed back down by Remus into little hiccups of breath as he stares up at the light playing on the frames of Dumbledore’s spectacles. Sirius sees an angry red scar on Neville’s forehead, carving above his right eye in a jagged lightning bolt, and his stomach turns in sympathy. It’s been bad enough to know that adults have been claimed and marred by this aimless and bitter war, but to have it culminate with the pain of an innocent child makes Sirius’ blood boil. Perhaps he _should_ have been an Auror, perhaps he could have done something more, anything that could have helped—

“Will you say goodbye to James for us?” Dumbledore requests as Sirius inwardly shakes himself out of his angry stewing.

“Yes, professor,” he says without thinking, and Dumbledore smiles with saddened fondness.

“You’ve not been wrong, you know,” the old wizard murmurs. “You’ve avoided the destiny of quite an unfortunately namesake, and for that you should be proud.”

Sirius swallows a thick rise of embarassment and chuckles once without humor. “I hardly think that’s taken as much effort as those on the field—”

“Building a life full of good people and hard, honest work is more important than most might want to admit,” McGonagall cuts in with terse authority, and Sirius surprises them both by wordlessly pulling her into a fierce embrace. She pats him tightly on the shoulder after a moment, but Sirius feels the awkward tenderness in the gesture all the same. He steps back to let her adjust her robes as she looks to Dumbledore; “Shall we, Albus?”

“Be well, Lily, we’ll owl soon. Just to make sure everything stays alright,” Dumbledore says in farewell, and the two professors sweep out the front door in a whisper of robes followed shortly by the pop of Apparition. Sirius stares mutely at the floor and tries not to focus on the sound of Remus trying to collect himself in the kitchen. Sirius clears his throat after a failed attempt as he looks up at Lily.

“I just need some air, I’ll be right back in,” He says vaguely, and Lily understands as she moves into the kitchen to find Remus. The muddled tones of her comforting, motherly murmurs float in the tiny foyer as Sirius shuts the front door softly, and he looks up at the sky before letting out the heave of a racking sob that he had been holding in since their arrival here. He folds down to his knees just outside the door, hands balled up at his eyes, hunching in on himself with the foreign mix of fear and relief. He knows they’ll all be safe now, he knows things will slowly start getting easier, but in the moment it all tastes like ashes.

He lets himself cry alone on the porch, just as he knows James is doing in the garden and Remus is doing in the kitchen with the knowing crutch of Lily’s assurance that it’s alright for him to weep, and for once he only hates himself halfway. Sirius cries and breathes in the thin, mossy smell of night amid the madness of disaster and triumph.

 

_VII._

He is 23 and it is New Years Eve, and his world is Remus Lupin.

Remus is beautiful. He always has been, but he's grown into his early 20s like a true professional of Aging Gracefully, adopting a stronger jaw and learning quickly how to tame the hardness in his eyes down to something calmer and more approachable in polite company. They have found themselves in extremely polite company tonight, all Muggle tuxedoes and shined shoes for a countdown to midnight in Blackpool, so Remus is smooth grace and two glasses of wine deep as he laughs easily at a quip from a sharply-dressed woman in yellow. His well-tailored jacket hides a wrapping of gauze around his left shoulder, a nasty gash from the moon two days earlier, but one wouldn’t be able to see the pain unless they knew. He is so absolutely, painfully beautiful that one tends to forget he hurts often.

“Rem,” with the confidentiality of tenderness as Sirius puts a gentle hand to Remus’ lower back—they can do this in public here, Blackpool is one of “those” cities and ideologies have started shifting in many others as well, it’s 1983 in ten minutes after all. Remus turns to him with an accidentally dazzling smile and the woman on the other end of his conversation smiles as well, although hers is demure and knowing as she moves off with a little wave. “The weather isn’t terrible and there’s a gorgeous balcony, come see?”

“Lead the way,” Remus hums, walking beside him happily as Sirius steers them to a large set of windowed casement doors to step outside. A view of the small city spreads before them, with the waning moon hanging high and the ocean thrumming to the right. Remus pushes the door shut with a creak from its old, over-varnished wood and takes a place next to Sirius at the carved stone railing.

Sirius quietly casts a pair of warming charms over their shoulders and can’t help but chuckle to himself at the perfect glee that alights on Remus’ face. Seeing the permanence of contentment wend its way back into Remus’ soul has been heaven to Sirius. From the Hallow’s Eve disaster into the six months that followed it, despite the surge of relief and vigor for the defeat of such a dark threat to their world, Sirius could count on one hand the number of times he saw Remus assume a smile that wasn’t forced. Because of the difficulty of mourning, early 1982 had been, to say the least, quite shit for both Sirius and Remus. But things repaired themselves steadily; it got easier to wake up and face the day with each morning that ebbed by, the earth started turning normally again in fits and starts after the winter saw itself out; Peter started seeing a pretty Healer he met at a pub in early spring, Harry turned 1, Remus got more comfortable with crying over losses he had bottled down for years—finally, _finally_ dismantling the high walls around his innermost heart that Sirius’ had been trying to chip away since they were boys—and now they find themselves on a balcony overlooking one of their favorite port towns on a clear night, with nothing to keep them from happiness on the foreseeable horizon for once in their lives. It seems to Sirius that from here, the universe could stretch on endlessly.

“I’m glad to see this year go,” Remus sighs, leaning his cheek on Sirius’ shoulder as Sirius tightens an arm around his waist. “What a bitch of a time we had of it, didn’t we?”

“Still hanging on though, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Sirius stares out over the view with the weight of hundreds of words crowding the back of his tongue, so he kisses Remus’ forehead gently, with equal measures of thanks and care, in an effort to dispel it. “I love you,” is all he manages to whisper, hoping the feeling of nameless serenity adorns its edges as he intended. Remus finishes his wine with a soft quaff, sets the glass down on the balcony’s edge, and turns to Sirius with a seraphic grin.

“You are everything,” he says, and Sirius’ heart soars in the gust of Remus gathering him into a tender embrace in the shadow of the wall beside them, breathing him in like the distant salt of the ocean. They stand in silence for a long stretch of time as Sirius idly counts the phasing of their heartbeats above the dulled hum of the party inside and traces soft patterns on the back of Remus’ tuxedo. A countdown suddenly starts, back from ten, in a swell of voices within, and Remus steps back with a laugh.

“Seven, six,” he says along in a raised voice, coaxing Sirius into a sunny smile along with him, “five—prepare for a hell of a snog, Pads—two, one!”

Sirius laughs against Remus’ lips when they crash together, his head bumping benignly against the ivied stones at his back. They greet the turn of the year in the twist of their shared breath, and to Sirius it feels like the destination of his entire life. All the crippling pain, all the moments that felt like too much, all the weathervane changes that always threatened to push him too far, adding themselves up and presenting the final sum of Remus Lupin in his life, in his arms, against his lips on the nascent seconds of the new year. It all finally makes sense.

_And I rise like a bird in the haze and the first rays touch the sky…_ Sirius thinks to himself on a melody from the record player earlier that morning while he closes his eyes, fitting against Remus like the keystones they are to one another’s inward archways, and loves him into the surety of a long and distant future.

 

— _fin_ —


End file.
